With the Supreme Court's decision in Halo
Electronics overruling the 2007 Seagate case,
non-practicing entities ("NPEs") may resume an old,
familiar practice to enable them to make a case for willful
infringement. See Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics,
Inc., 136 S. Ct. 1923 (June 13, 2016); See also In re
Seagate Technology LLC, 497 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2007). Before
the Federal Circuit decision in Seagate, NPEs would often
send a list of patents in their possession to numerous businesses
which possessed or produced items or utilized processes which in
the view of the NPE arguably infringed any of the patents on the
list. The reason for sending the list was to set up a claim for
willful infringement against any parties whom the NPE sued in court
by demonstrating that the parties being sued had notice of the
listed patents, and chose to continue their allegedly infringing
activities anyway. A recipient of the list risked liability for
willful infringement,
